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There is absolutely no bend or flex in the bigger gyutos, they're very stiff.

interesting.. I didn't realize the nashiji gyuto's existed til you inspired me to check elsewhere (than eBay) and I found them.. could you give a rough estimate of the blade thickness? the 155 is just over 1/16th inch.. not even 3/32.

To answer my own question from earlier, from poking around I learned quality laminated knives like Takeda's super blue steel line have been known to bend and stay bent and apparently it's consistent across the knives, which hasn't been enough to deter a solid following. So presumably that lone poor trait is minor in use, and doesn't imply bad quality by itself.

hi all! the 155 size Tanaka is really actually a winner, the size and especially shape is growing on me. I surfed some of my other favorite makers (in theory.. due to steel and process) and didn't realize it isn't a given style or size by a maker. Ex Takeda, Yoshikane, Fujiwara, all kinda let this style of knife.. not bein their lineup. $36 on ebay shipped??

Anyway before I get carried away with my growing enthusiasm (think I'm getting another one..) I'm posting today about the sharpening of the steel and microbevelling thereof. I brutally tested the knife sharpening for example a carpentry pencil, and it did not like the graphite much. Nor did it like the piece of Oak I started shaving. So I've been dialing down the original edge I had on it, which I've now calculated at a ridiculous 8.4 degrees, a total V

Now, I had an idea of how I wanted the microbevel angle just by feel, but I wanted to double check my instinct of how I wanted to hold the blade on the stone with the correct angle I was going for, and figured out more or less how to do that, on a dime. No srsly. ahhaa

So I started by calculating blade thickness, which was slightly less than 3/32, or as I called it, 1/16+. Call this T. So next I wanted to know the length of the bevel, call it B, and measured it at 7/16+. So, the ratio of T/B was just about 1.x/7. This gives me the triangle with 3 sides, 1.3, 7.3, 7.3. Now I can calculate that angle, and this is the pure V of the entire bevel, which is too steep in practice for this GS3 steel.

So, I basically decided I wanted 22* total. Dividing the current total angle of both bevels by two, it's like 4.2* per side, and I had to add 7ish degrees microbevel, per side. The issue became visualizing this angle with the knife on the stone, or more importantly, figuring out the hand positioning, and this is probably the part that gets tricky/intimidating for most people.

Something just came up but I have some pictures/further explanaiton to help illustrate how this is possible with something hopefully everybody here has access to. More to come

Alright never mind I can finish this again lol. So I was a bit wrong above anyway 1+/7 is a bit more like 9 degrees, and we want to add therefore about 6.5 degrees per side. Now you could carry on drawing triangles, because all the info is there but there's an easier way, in this case.. we know 1/16th+/7+=9, so we need to add about 2/3 of that. WELL. It just so happens a quarter is exactly 1/16th of an inch. Well shucks that's too much. But luckily there are thinner pieces of US coinage! In this case, a dime is very, very close to 2/3 a quarter's thickness.

Before I get too carried away, it's important to remember your point of measure due to distal taper. If you want to find WHERE your spine is 1/16th, just use your fingers and a quarter, and mark with a pencil, and keep that point as your point of reference. Now your ratio will be 1/16 over whatever the bevel width is.

In my case, the dime was close to the 2/3 of a 1/16th I needed. So what this means is, if we put the dime under the farthest point of the bevel, where the ratio is about 1+/7 (it's a somewhat specific point you will have this ratio due to distal taper..), it will be around the 11deg microbevel we want on that side.

Here's the dime under the knife (sorry it was a bit tricky..)

As you can see, the edge is raised a decent amount off the table, and if you're confident/skilled, you could probably just see this distance and kinda memorize it and proceed with the microbevelling. But, it's definitely a difficult process to slide that dime under there JUST so the edge of the dime meets the far extent of the bevel, so really, the functional distance you can see/feel is the height of the spine off the surface. So that's again, available to you as a triangle mathematically, which I did calculate, and I already knew I wanted the spine 3/16 off the table (handily, 3 quarters). However, another way to do it would have been to just hold that bevel as I did for the picture and begin sliding change under the very edge of the spine and get it to touch at two points. What I mean by that is shown with this sketch

since both edges touch the coins at.. their edges, this is now a gauge you can use to make sure you're holding at the right angle.

Here's a final picture of where I actually had the coins positioned so you can see from the top. Just imagine that the dime is basically on the underside, not top, and maybe moved left a hair..

So, now, this doesn't work for all edges. If you have a convexed laser, just measure the total belly, and plug in the desired microbevel angle (lets say 11 again.) So, now assume your knife was I dunno 2 inches deep at the reference point (a point on the knife of your choosing). Now you have a triangle with 2 angles, 90 and 11, and a side of 2". There are plenty of triangle solvers online that make this process very easy, so no arcsine's are involved haha.

And, more importantly, the gauge isn't that useful as a stack of coins. So, wrap the stack of coins with some tape and what's even better about that is, if you're likely not going to have something perfectly incremented in coins thicknesses. So, you can either push the stack of coins deeper, and kinda mark a line on the tape at which depth they're relevant, or again use the exact spine, and just wrap more layers of tape!

Hey, it's not perfect, but perfect edges don't exist anyway. I mean, is there REEAALLLY an edge that is microbevelled at exactly 11 degrees ALL the way up the blade? What about if its distal tapered, does that microbevel beome narrower/shorter or does it change angles steeper and keep its size? It gets pretty complicated to make a perfect edge, and there are probably two ways: one, a very robotic bondage looking series of jigs and polishing equipment. Or, practice and skill. The best purpose here is you have a crutch to be able to trust your hands a bit more and help you get sharpening. With time, there won't be any more need for taped up coins and your knives will be sharper than ever.

currently, 36$. But the yen moves a lot. Still it's def one of the best deals I've gotten on anything and goes to illustrate the law of diminishing returns in some of the pricier echelons.

chinacats, thanks for the reply. I'm def overthinking it, I know haha. Hence the 3d modelling. But the point is, I actually want to know the angle at which I'm sharpening the G3 steel so I can find the ideal angle for this steel, which is presumably slightly different than others. This is a good experiment for this knife because it's extra chippy at lower angles. The steel characteristic is both chippy due to temper (which seems "as advertised") and chippy via no Mo or V additives so I'm guessing it's towards an extreme. So actually one or two trig puzzles in this case is just enough thinking.

I liked Johns vids. Better than most I've seen. I prefer to switch hands and still flip. Always found scratch pattern better this way, nice X pattern both sides, easier to buff out at the finer grits. As it turns out my default microbevelling hand position was damn close to the degree I wanted anyway, in the end, but I wanted to know for sure what I was doing a bit more precisely. Good luck getting much data on your output another way. German makers use lasers. Hadn't seen a gauge block mentioned in this regard